


Switched (English Version)

by ashtobone



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Adaptation, Deaf Character, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Family Secrets, High School, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV First Person, POV Harry Styles, POV Louis Tomlinson, Romantic Fluff, Sign Language, Switched Babies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26326417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashtobone/pseuds/ashtobone
Summary: Harry and Louis were born on the same day, in the same hospital, in Doncaster.Harry is a good son, who overcomes dozens of obstacles every day. Louis is an aspiring musician with a restless mind. Deep down, they both know that they don't belong where they've always been.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	1. I: BLOOD TYPES

**Author's Note:**

> "Switched" is an adaptation and was originally published in 2017, on Wattpad. For many reasons, I was absent and took my stories with me. I don't intend to publish them again on Wattpad, but it seems unfair to leave them in the dark and away from the people who read, liked and supported me when I published it.
> 
> This and all my stories originally posted on Wattpad will be transferred here to the Archive and I hope they can still please some hearts as they once did.

**• Louis •**

“Hey, Mrs. Anne! It’s my first day of school and you are nervous! Take it easy mom!” I said with a playful smile.

It was my first day of school in sophomore year, I was calm, but my mother was a nervous wreck. I always thought the tendency that everyone in the family had was funny: they were nervous about little... Everyone but me. I always found it funny that I didn't really look at all like my parents or my sister Gemma - almost as if I had parachuted into a family where I didn't fit.

As if reading my mind, Mom said:

“How can you be so... quiet? What's your secret? You don't even look like my son!”

I laughed out loud as I reached for my backpack in the back seat of the car.

"I don't understand it either, Mom," I said, as she smoothed my bangs slightly and looked at me as if I were, in fact, still a baby.

“Good luck at school, son.”

I nodded with a small smile and got out of the car, walking towards my good friends - Niall and Liam - who were waiting for me to enter the school. Let another school year begin!

* * *

_ “Biology on the first day?!” _ Niall was practically shouting as we headed for the lab.

“Shut up, Niall! Do you really think that someone here is excited about genetics on Monday morning?” Liam protested and I agreed.

“Really, Nialler. Do you think you are the only one who is suffering here?”

Niall made a funny face and would probably continue on his drama for the rest of the morning.

I sat on the bench and listened impatiently to a dozen instructions about what we were going to do there. Apparently, it would be a simple experiment that would tell us what our blood type was and we could then compare it with that of our parents. That had exactly ALL the prerequisites for being a pain in the ass, but it could be worse. I always liked to think it could be worse, because well... it could. At least I was studying at the best, and possibly most expensive, Doncaster school.

I felt a slight prick on my finger pulling me back to reality, while the teacher handed me some cards and helped me to carry out the small experiment. Some colleagues seemed excited about it, but it didn't make much difference to me: it's not like I'm going to use genetics outside of school, right?  _ I'm going to be a musician! _

We stayed in that for a long time. The room was starting to get messy and the class was a little dispersed, after all, the teacher helped everyone, individually. The results were slow, which didn't help much either.

I talked to Niall and Liam while we waited. We talked about our vacation trips, about my growing guitar skills, about how we needed to schedule a band rehearsal at my house. Yes, we are in a band and no, we are not an example of a band to be followed. The attempt is free, anyway.

A few more minutes passed and the teacher finally announced that we could check our results. It had not been a difficult experiment and, as expected, everything was fine with everyone's result, except mine. A lump formed in my throat as I stared at the sheet that said:

**mother:** A

**father:** A

**patient:** AB

I was  _ fucked _ , I knew I was fucked and in shock. I knew: either I just started the year failing miserably in a biology experiment, or I am adopted.

* * *

Anne and Des were waiting for me in our living room when I got home from school.

My heart felt bigger than my body. I could feel it tearing at my chest, throbbing in my legs, at the tips of my fingers and muffling my hearing. I cried in class. I cried in the car with Niall and Liam as I came home and cried there now, before they realized I had arrived. My state of shock in the classroom was not something I could hide. My teacher helped me to repeat the test three more times, always getting the same result. I had not failed the test, I was the failure.

I took a deep breath and entered the room, doing my best not to look as upset as I really was. I sat in the armchair opposite the big sofa where my parents sat.

“When were you going to tell me?” I asked, in a whisper.

“Tell you what, dear?” Anne asked.

“That I…” I felt the tears return to my eyes. “That I'm adopted,  _ I'm not your son _ . You know, mom, the test couldn't go wrong four times. The first time I thought I was wrong, but…”

“My love…” she crouched down in front of me and took my hands in hers, “do you think we would hide it from you? How many times have you not seen the pictures of my big belly while I was waiting for you? This was just a test, done at school.  _ Oh, dear, Louis! _ It wasn't even a test done in a good clinic.  _ You are mine! _ ”

My father nodded, with a brief smile, and Anne continued.

“For nothing in the world I would lie to you, dear. Forget it. You are mine, you are ours.” She waved in Des's direction, but I shook my head.

“My God, mom! I have  _ nothing  _ of yours in me! No daddy! I am completely different from Gemma! I don't need you to try to deceive me.”

“Son, I don't…”

“Mom, do something for me?” I asked as she and my father watched me, confused. “I want a test. A real test, in a good clinic. I need to know and mom... I know you already wondered about it. I need to be sure.”

I watched as my mom squeezed my hands tightly, my dad let out a long breath. I knew it wasn't easy for them, but if I was adopted, I wanted to know. At that moment I didn't care if doubting my parents' word hurt them. If they had hidden something from me for 17 years, I would still be hurting the most.


	2. II: TESTS, RESULTS & FAKE FRIENDS

**• Louis •**

For exactly three whole days, I was living in hell. Not that my parents or sister were making it difficult for me, but I didn't know how to be okay.

The school had become a private piece of torture, where Niall and Liam tried to cheer me up at all costs, and I refused to respond positively to their optimism. My mother gave me affection and tried to have long conversations with me, in addition to massacring me daily with sessions "let's see these photos from when I was pregnant, because maybe that way you believe that you are not adopted". My father kept his usual distance. At that moment, I could only be the worst friend, the worst son and the worst brother that anyone could have; but the point is that it is not easy to control moods when your identity is at stake.

Exactly three days ago an exam at school had accused me of not being my parents' son. We visited a clinic that afternoon; me, my dad and my mom. We took blood samples, talked to some people at the scene and were told: in three days we would have a result.  _ Today _ .

I crossed the school lawn with my head down, brooding over the same thoughts that had haunted me since I read the first result, in biology class. Anne was waiting for me in the car with a loving - and shamefully concerned - smile on her face.

“Hello, dear. How was it at school?” she asked.

I shrugged in a silent response and she promptly started to speak:

“We will meet your father there and everything will be alright dear, you will see. Do you want to go somewhere to eat first? Do you want to call Gemma? She is at home today, painting wonderful canvases, maybe she needs your help... She loves it when you make guesses on her pictures, you know that, right dear?” she wouldn't admit it, but she was nervous.  _ She didn't breathe, she was as full of doubts as I was _ .

Today we would have in our hands the detailed and definitive results of that mess. It was too much for my 17 year old head to process, it was too much for anyone. I would know if I had been cheated, if everything was fine or something else I couldn’t even imagine. The possibilities seemed frightening to me; I didn't want to think about it, but I couldn't stop.

The clinic, which was actually an annex to the hospital where I - supposedly - was born, was just four blocks from the school where I studied; but my mom threw a thousand words at me. She said disconnected things about her day, about Gemma, about how everything was going to be okay but I really didn't absorb any of that.

The four blocks that separated the hospital from my school were the longest path I have ever taken.

* * *

When we finally arrived at the hospital, my father was already there. We would have to wait for a few more minutes, so I did my best to settle on an uncomfortable couch in the small - and painfully white - waiting room. The walls were very white, the furniture and decorative objects were white, the girls at the reception wore impeccably white shirts and the strong white light, reflected in all that, was an aggression to my eyes.

I took my phone out of my pocket, checking the messages for any brief distractions. There were messages from Liam and Niall, an invitation from Eleanor to go to the cinema, some stupid posts in the school group. I wasn’t in the mood for any of that, I just leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes, begging for relief.

I felt that a few minutes passed before we were finally called.

Upon entering the room where we would receive the result, I knew that nothing would be okay. There was not just a doctor there, who would be normal for a simple delivery of results. There was a familiar face, a longtime friend of my parents.  _ Lawyer _ . He had worked for years at the hospital's administration, on the recommendation of my father.

We settled on the chairs in front of the table where a young doctor was waiting for us. I sat next to Anne, our fingers intertwined, and my father sat in an armchair farther down. We exchanged silent greetings and the blond-haired girl began to speak:

“Mr. and Mrs. Styles, Louis... I fear that the results were a little out of the expected.” She looked at me with an air of pity that I couldn't stand.

I felt my lungs burn and a brief breathlessness. The doctor kept talking, she quoted numbers and percentages, things I didn't understand. A buzzing took over my ears. I felt my mother sob and shake my hand. My father was approaching, in slow motion. Everything was spinning, nothing was real. And the doctor kept talking, talking, talking.

"In short," she said, "I'm sorry, but you don't share any characteristics. There is no chance that Louis is biologically connected to you.”

I knew tears were streaming down my eyes, I felt them, hot, tearing my face. My mother cried loudly, my father asked too many questions. That's when Simon, the lawyer, ended up intervening.

“Actually Des, Anne” he treated my parents informally and it bothered me “the hospital administration has a brief idea of what may have happened. It was Christmas Eve, things were a little complicated and possibly one of the nurses mistook the bracelets of two newborn babies. This is the strongest possibility, Louis and your  _ biological  _ son were exchanged in the maternity ward. We have a file on the child, and one on the nurse.”

I couldn't understand where it was going, but he didn't seem to care, and just continued:

“She quit a few weeks after the discharge from Anne and the other mother, claiming exhaustion and  _ "having problems" _ with work at the maternity hospital.”

_ Shit _ . I had been switched at birth and my parents' closest friend knew everything.

* * *

The silence on the way home was only broken by Anne's loud sobs. Des was driving angrily, and I didn't dare look at them.

I spent 17 years of my life feeling out of place, looking for anything that connected me to my family, anything physical and tangible. Now I knew why I never found it, but it didn't end my sadness.

Apparently, I lived a life that was supposed to be that of a little boy named Harry. And my name shouldn't be Styles, but Tomlinson. And my mother should be called Johannah. These were the brief information in the "file" that the hospital kept about the baby who lived my life. There was also a phone number and part of me, the part that almost always acts on impulse, would like to call it. I would like to know what he was like, what she was like; but this was not the right moment.

We got home and I went up to my room, closing the door and seeking comfort in my bed. I heard Gemma coming down the stairs to meet our parents and heard the screaming below.

“What the fuck, Anne! Do you want me to stay calm?!” Des shouted without worrying about who could hear him. “They deprived me of my son for 17 years! Simon's son of a bitch knew everything! That scoundrel... after everything we did for him, he hid my son from me!”

“Deprived you? You have never been  _ deprived  _ of a child! Our son is in his room, crying!” I could hear the nervousness in Anne's voice. “You deprived yourself of the wonderful boy that Louis is! You stayed away from the children because  _ you wanted to! _ ”

“For God's sake, Anne... he has nothing of ours, he does not have our blood!”

“He will never be less mine for not having my blood! Des, if you…”

I closed my eyes and covered my ears, I didn't want to know what was coming next; I wanted to burst into tears right there. Fade away and never be found. I concentrated on my heartbeat, forgetting the world around me.

I felt the mattress move, and when I opened my eyes, Gemma was there, sitting next to me. She smiled warmly, but I noticed the moisture in her eyes, she had been crying.

“Hey, Lou. Look at me, and pay attention” she pulled me closer and put her arm around my shoulders. I let my head weigh on her chest and she, with the other hand, played on my fingers.

“Say it, Gems.” I encouraged her.

“You know it doesn't change anything, do you? You are my little brother. My little brother and my best friend. It won't change anything for Mom or Dad either, he's just... He's pissed, Lou. He always trusted Simon a lot.” she sighed “I will need you to be strong, dear. Stronger than ever, things will get back on track. I promise.”

Gemma squeezed me closer in her embrace and left a light kiss on my messy hair. She promised, but I wasn't so sure.


	3. Chapter 3

**• Harry •**

I was sitting in the seat of the bus, my head resting on the window glass and my eyes closed, in vain attempt to escape the sunlight filtered through the glass. I felt the vehicle vibrating in every part of my body. Mom was sitting next to me; her hand rested on my leg and she nurtured me with a delicate caress. She wanted to give me peace of mind, but my eyes caught the frantic movement of her feet. Jay stamped her feet when she was nervous and well... She had reasons to be nervous.

Things were a little more difficult than usual since we got that call earlier in the week.

I didn't hear the phone ring, even though I was sitting right next to it. I only realized it when my mother answered it, with a smile on her face. I looked at her fondly, as I always looked at her, and I was curious. My eyes followed calmly every movement of her lips. Her expression grew more tense with each word exchanged with whoever was on the other end of the line. She knew I was, in my very private way, eavesdropping on the conversation, so she walked away.

At first, she didn't want to talk about it with me. The fact was that my mother knows me too well, she knew that I would not give up - she taught me not to give up -, she knows that in general, I am stronger than I look, she knows that I can take the blows of life. So, she talked about it with me.

The call that had upset her was made by a lawyer, a guy named Simon, who worked for the owners of the hospital where I was born. Simon told my mom that a mess had happened the night I came into the world. Something about an overworked nurse and too many babies in the maternity ward. The tired nurse would have switched my bracelet with that of another boy - another newborn - and my mother brought home a baby that was not hers. She raised a baby that was not hers.

Jay cried trying to explain it to me, but I didn't. She told me that she was scared, that she didn't want to lose me to another family. She would not lose me.

Jay was my family. Just me and her.

Jay was the woman who stood by me at the beginning of my life, when everything was a little less complicated. She was the person who took me to the hospital when, at the age of 5, I had that fever that made me hallucinate - lost and feeling nothing but pain. She was the person next to me when I spent three weeks in the hospital. She was the person who hugged me when, after the hospital, I cried at dawn trying to understand what had happened to my head, and when I cried even more, wondering why Daddy didn't come home after it happened to my head.

Jay raised me alone. She doubled the shifts in the salon where she cut hair, just to pay for good doctors who would allow me to live a life closer to normal or, at least, to have opportunities closer to those that other boys my age had. She was the person who worked on her days off, the person who never took a vacation, to be able to afford the four daily buses I used to go to school.

Jay was my mom, the only mom I could ever want and no mess in a hospital could change that. She would never lose me.

* * *

We were waiting at the point where we would take the second bus, I was starting to sweat because the sun was shining, too intense. My mom had an arm around my back, her head on my shoulder. We waited in silence.  _ Always silence _ .

The day after that call, we visited the hospital. We took small blood samples and three days later: result. I really wasn't your son.

With an agreement from everyone involved, today I would meet my birth parents and the boy I could have been.

I knew a thing or two about the Styles, they were big on our little Doncaster. Mr. Styles had been a football player in his youth and, although retired, he still participated in important events such as fundraising parties and even did some TV commercials. He was married to Anne - my birth mother - and they had an older daughter who was an artist. I saw some things about her on the internet, her paintings were famous among local galleries. About the boy... I didn't know anything.

I saw the bus approach and I sighed. That was another thing I knew about Styles: they lived at the far end of Doncaster, where houses played small castles with high walls, and where teenagers paraded in designer clothes or pretty uniforms from very expensive schools. The same city, but a completely different world.

I settled back on the uncomfortable seat, vibration invading my body.

* * *

After 40 minutes on the second drive, we had finally arrived at the address given to us. I wasn't nervous, but Mom looked like she was about to have a heart attack. She held my hand tightly, almost crushing my fingers.

A large automatic iron gate opened for us as soon as Jay rang the intercom. We went in and it closed on our back. The path between the gate and the door of the house looked more like a big walkway. I had never seen such a large garden or such a large number of windows in a house. It looked more like a hotel.

When the door opened, a couple appeared from behind it. Anne and Desmond. He was very serious, but she had a milder expression, although she looked ready to cry any minute.

They shook hands with Jay and then looked at me expectantly. I gave my best smile - the one that I knew would show the dimples on my face.

“Hi, I'm H-A-R-R-Y!” I said. My lips formed the words slowly, the voice hoarse and a little nasal. As I spoke with my lips, my hands also spoke, out of habit. My nimble fingers encoded my name " _ Harry" _ . It’s been 12 years since I started using sign language.

I saw the expression of confusion rising on the couple's face in front of me. I read the disappointment in their eyes.

_ I'm Harry Edward Tomlinson, I was switched in the maternity hospital... and I'm deaf. _


	4. IV: SIGNS

**• Louis •**

We were all sitting in the living room. Me on one of the sofas, next to Anne and Des; Johannah next to Harry, right in front of us. We didn't say much - in fact a kind of awkward silence weighed on us all - but our fake smiles spoke for themselves.

My parents were terrified. I think they had thought of many possibilities regarding their biological son, but not that he would have a... problem. Johannah looked quite uncomfortable. It was amazing how much she looked like me; not as if I were her own reflection, but there was too much of her in my features. And Harry... I analyzed him from the moment he walked through our door. He was what the girls at my school would call cute and yes, that thought could be disturbing, but at the moment, I didn't care.

Harry was tall, with curly hair and beautiful green eyes. I tirelessly mapped his face, keeping every detail and comparing every small portion to the faces of my family. He spoke slowly, his hands always following, with precise gestures, the words that came out of his mouth.

If looks could undo people, Harry would have come undone right there, such is my eyes' obsession with fixing his face inside my memory. I was about to be ashamed of myself when Gemma opened the front door and saved me.

She introduced herself briefly to Harry and Johannah and when the boy signed his name, she looked at Anne and understood everything. Gemma smiled and did what she had to do, started talking to Harry using signs as well.

“Harry is a very beautiful name” she looked at him smiling, talking and making the gestures calmly, as if she hadn't practiced in a long time.

“You use signs!” he replied excitedly, with a huge smile tearing his face and exposing two little holes in his cheeks. It was good to see a sincere smile, for a change.

“Oh, no dear! I just know a few words. I learned in college, but I'm really bad. Sorry if I accidentally say something bad to you” she said and Harry gave a light laugh.  _ Had he heard the sound of his own laughter? _

“Well... I think you're doing great, Gemma.” He smiled as if he was mesmerized by her.

I was mesmerized by both.

My attention was all on the conversation between Harry and Gemma. She seemed genuinely happy to be talking to him; he seemed excited about her. They continued on this for some time, but I couldn't pay that much attention because Mom and Johannah now had a side conversation.

Gemma motioned for Harry to wait and came over to me, sitting next to me and speaking softly in my ear:

“Hey Lou, why don't you ask Harry to come to the kitchen for ice cream? He looks like a good boy and it looks like we're having a lot of adult conversation around here.” She gave Anne and my birth mother quick look, stroked my hair and added: “Ask him, pretty please.”

I left a kiss on her cheek and stood up. I would call Harry for a walk to our kitchen.

* * *

Harry sat across from me on the other side of the kitchen counter, with a bowl of ice cream in his hands, eating slowly. I couldn't stop looking at him. I wanted to talk to him, ask a thousand questions, but how?

Now and then he looked up at me and smiled. Not the kind of genuine smile he had given Gemma while they were talking in the living room. It was a more restrained but mischievous smile. I wanted to understand all that, I was desperate; and as if reading my mind, Harry started to speak.

“You know, Louis…” he had pronounced my name the wrong way, but who could blame him? He continued: “If you want to, we can do it.”

“It? What?” I asked.

“Talk. You can talk to me. If we work as a team, I can understand you. I do this every day. I go to school and I have a job. I live my life, most of the time, surrounded by people who listen. You will not kill me for talking to me. Just do it slowly... and let me look at your lips while you do it.”

It moved me in ways I couldn't explain. Clouds of confusion were forming in my head, as a sudden heat rose up my face.

“Oh, I'm sorry about that. Let's work as a team.” I smiled, trying to dissipate the tension that was installed in my body.

Harry kept his eyes fixed on my lips and constantly moistened his while I spoke. It was almost as if there was sexual tension in that act, but there... there wasn't, right? RIGHT.

“You know, you said my name the wrong way” I took courage and said. “You can't pronounce the "s".”

“Oh, so it's Loueh?” he laughed.

“Yep!” I nodded smiling.

“Okay, Loueh.”

I sighed and decided to start the little interrogation my head had been asking since I laid eyes on the boy in front of me.

“So it was always like that? You were born like this?” I asked.

“No, no. It happened when I was 5 years old.” he was gesturing quickly and my eyes were suffering to follow him. It would be difficult if I tried to learn, but Harry was really good with his hands.

“ How did it happen?”

He sighed like a painful memory.

“I had meningitis. I was hospitalized for weeks, spent most of the time sleeping or hallucinating because of the fever. One day I woke up and well... Mom's voice was gone.”

I nodded and decided to let that part of the conversation die right there.

“You said you work, what do you do?” I asked, again.

“I work in a bakery, but I'm just the cashier, and I help with cleaning sometimes. I also make cookies to sell at school” he smiled proudly.

“And where do you study?”

“I study at Carlton, a school downtown. You know it?” now he had asked a question.

I nodded and was about to ask more about the school when I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. I removed it and read the message on the screen "Eleanor". I would have to answer it, or she would keep on calling incessantly. I showed the device to Harry who just nodded and said:

“Go ahead, Louis.”

My conversation with Eleanor did not last more than three or four minutes. She wanted to call me to a party, but I didn't have a head for it, so we argued and she hung up on me.  _ Classic _ .

I turned my attention to Harry, who was looking at me with a funny expression.

“Girlfriend? You look angry,” he said.

“NO. No, no. She's not my girlfriend. I have no girlfriend. I'm single” I was pretty much addicted to making it clear that I had nothing serious with Eleanor. She was fun... and she wasn't even that much fun. I took the opportunity to question him “But what about you? Have a girlfriend?”

“Nop!” a simple answer.

“Isn't any girl pretty enough?” my curiosity would be my death, Niall and Liam used to say. Harry laughed and replied:

“The girls are beautiful, actually. But I am gay, they would not meet my requirements.” He opened a smile and we stayed like that, smiling at each other for too long.

* * *

After a long time punctuated by conversations and long smiling silences - that was my definition - Gemma appeared in the kitchen telling Harry that Johannah was asking him to leave.

Everyone said goodbye and exchanged hugs. I exchanged an especially tight - and long - hug with the boy I could have been.

Anne and Des made it clear that they would like to see Harry more often and he seemed excited about it. When he and Johannah crossed the gate and returned to their world, Gemma rested her face on my shoulder, squeezing me in a loving hug, and asked me:

“So  _ baby bro _ , how is he?”

I sighed and answered the only thing that came to my mind:

“He's me, in another life.”


	5. V: HEARING LOVERS

**• Harry •**

It was just another Monday morning, but I hadn't been to school since the day Mom got that call. Not that I really needed to be absent, but Jay insisted that I take some time off at home and, after almost a week of "vacation", I was back. I got off the bus and could see Zayn in the Carlton parking lot with his motorcycle. I hurried my pace a little in order to say good morning before we had to go into class.

Zayn is my best friend from all over the world. Like me, he is deaf, but he has a completely different story than mine. His mother and father are also deaf and met in college, in a specialized course. She is part of the team that runs the school where we studied, which, by the way, is the only exclusive school for the deaf in Doncaster. Zayn uses the signs from the first years of life, but he never wanted to be like me, never felt the need to orally speak. It would be more difficult for him than it is for me, after all I had the first five years of my life as a reference and he never had anything.

I approached, touching his shoulder so I could greet him.

_ "Hey, bad boy, good morning!" _ I said.

_ "Hey Hazz! Where have you been?" _ he asked.

_ "Long story, Z. I'll tell you later. Tell me, what did I miss?" _

_ "Same old stuff. School isn't so nice without you pissing me off, Harry." _ he laughed and I replied:

_ "This is a good way to say that I haven't missed anything." _ I asked him to wait while I checked the cell phone that had just vibrated in my pocket. The warning for two new messages flashed on the screen. Messages from Gemma Styles.

Gemma and I had exchanged phones in the brief conversation we had when we met and now she was keeping me updated, almost in real time, on everything that was going on in the Styles bubble. She filled me with questions every day and sent me dozens of pictures of the family's daily life. I was not complaining. They were photos of the beautiful pictures she painted, Desmond watching a football game, Anne preparing cookies and Louis... Louis rehearsing with friends in the garage, Louis stealing cookies while Anne was not looking, Louis watching the game and wearing only one baggy pants and no shirt. I was definitely not complaining.

I smiled at the stupid thought and the memory of a Louis with a bare chest thrown on the couch. When my eyes turned to Zayn, he looked at me and smiled.

_ "What is it, Z?" _ I asked.

_ "Come on, Harry. Who's the boy?" _ he had an expression worthy of someone who just killed a big charade.

_ "There is no boy, Zayn. Don’t be such an ass." _

_ "Harry, I've known you for as long as I can remember. You can't think you can hide something from me while you stare at your phone with that expression of passionate idiot. Come on, tell me everything." _ He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked towards the big door in the only building that made up our little school.

_ "Long story, Z. But I promise to tell you." _ I said at last.

* * *

During the break I briefly told Zayn about the mess my life had become, but I didn't mention that the boy I had a crush on was my mother's real son. It would be my secret, at least for now, after all it would come to nothing at all.

We sat at a table, very close to the canteen and I had a big jar full of cupcakes in front of me. Zayn held out a $ 2 bill and I declined.

_ "They're free for you, you know that. Take it." _ I chose the most beautiful and handed it to you.

_ "You are a fool Harry, I think it is good to keep the money." _ He opened my backpack and threw the note inside, while I laughed at his attitude. He bit the cookie and started yet another question session:

_ "But then, Hazz... what about the boy? Is he from Carlton? Do I know him? You know I need to approve the boy, before you can date him." _

_ "No, Z. You don't know him and I don't think we're going to date. I don't even know if he likes boys, to be honest." _

_ "Can he hear?" _ Zayn questioned.

_ "Yes, completely." _ I replied. Zayn grimaced and finished the cupcake with one last bite. He clapped his hands quickly in the hope of getting rid of the small crumbs stuck to his fingers and finished:

_ "You know what I think of that." _

I nodded. I knew what he thought of that.

We said nothing more.

* * *

After two more classes and 1 hour and a half in public transportation, I was finally home. I had two more hours of rest before I needed to get ready and go to the bakery where I worked until 7pm. That brief conversation with Zayn had haunted me all the way back and even now, while I was in my room, wearing more comfortable clothes and trying to feel good; it still haunted me.

Zayn thought that deaf people and hearing people could not have relationships, that it would never work because they were two people who literally spoke different languages, trying to make a broken boat float. He said that never, no one that could hear would understand the life of a deaf person or cooperate 100% to build a healthy relationship. He once said to me "You can love a hearing person, but it won't work. So choose a good deaf person that you can love a little bit and everything will work." I found this idea disturbing.

I finished dressing and went to the kitchen, Mom had left a sandwich ready for me in the fridge, just like every other day. I picked up the sandwich and a plate and threw myself on the couch, turning on the notebook that rested on the coffee table. I was going to start what had been my biggest hobby for the past few days: stalking the Styles. In particular: stalking Louis Styles on all possible social networks and websites. I could spend the day going from page to page, just drowning in your eyes, as blue as the sea.

Of course, it wasn't all about my new fixation on Louis. I had really read interesting things about Styles, especially about Desmond's football days.

I was already completely lost in that world when I felt the cell phone vibrating on my leg. When I checked it, the screen warned: (4) New Messages from Unknown Number.

I quickly entered the password that unlocked the device and read the messages

**[Unknown Number]:** Hi, Harry! This is Louis. Styles. Remember me?

**[Unknown Number]:** I stole your cell number on Gemma’s phone, I hope you don't mind.

**[Unknown Number]:** I was thinking about you. Do you work today? What time does your shift end?

**[Unknown Number]:** Is it okay if I drop by after work? Do you send me the address? I want to show you something xx

I felt a smile rip across my face and reread the messages just to make sure they were real. I took a deep breath and answered.

**[me]:** Hey, Louis! Of course I remember you :)

**[me]:** My shift ends at 7pm and I would love to see whatever it is that you intend to show me.

I sent the address and waited for just a few seconds, before the screen glowed again with a new notification.

**[Louis]:** Deal! Wait for me in front of your work, okay? See you at night.

I typed one last ok and thought about what Zayn had said to me. Maybe he was wrong. Perhaps a listener and a deaf person could work. Maybe the boat wasn't broken, maybe it just floated aimlessly and if both parties wanted to, they could find the right direction to navigate. If both parties wanted to, they could build a compass.


End file.
